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Friday, September
12, 2003 at 09:59:23 (EDT) |
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What's it all about, Alfie?
What are we supposed to do on a day (the day after Sept. 11th, mind
you) when they tell us that both Johnny
Cash and John
Ritter have died? Go back to bed. It's depressing but I must admit,
I wanna make sure I'm at the next Three's Company II night
at Freddy's,
in which actors perform scripts from the TV show. I expect the next
performance will have a resonance not usually present in such lighthearted
fare.
Every day these kittens knock my 7"
records onto the floor. I've taken to predicting the tone of the
day by what they select. The week so far has gone like this:
I haven't determined yet if their selections are meant to be ironic
or not. I dunno, kittens seem pretty earnest most of the time. It's
not until they grow up that cats start to get sarcastic.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Wednesday, September
10, 2003 at 14:18:12 (EDT) |
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I never know when to stop
Why isn't anybody trying to stop the RIAA?
Isn't anybody in authority at all concerned about this? So they're
suing file-sharers, including a 12-year
old girl, whose parents had $2000 extorted to stop litigation.
What the hell is going on here? Okay, I get it about the copyright
crap. Apparently somebody isn't getting paid when people download
clips of Britney Spears swearing, and so this justifies lawsuits on
a massive scale? Bullshit. I certainly hope the P2P community is hustling
to find alternate methods of file sharing besides the applications
targeted by the RIAA. I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't apps
out there already that provided better privacy (it's all too easy
for the snoops to track down users through their chickenshit ISPs).
I have been using a little program called Piolet
which, when it works, works pretty well.
We need to keep looking for ways to keep bugging the RIAA. Things
are at a pretty lame state when little girls can get charged 2 grand
by some huge-ass corporation. I certainly hope that after the settlement
is paid, she's allowed to walk into Tower Records and just take
$2000 worth of CDs. It's only fair.
Meanwhile, while the lawsuits are alarming, let's put it into perspective.
There have been 261 official suits so far. But how many file-sharers
are out there? Currently, Kazaa
alone has 4,029,387 users connected. That's about .0065% (and the
RIAA has been also looking at other file-sharing platforms like
Gnutella).
Of course this is a global network, so there's no telling how many
of those people fall within US jurisdiction. Does anybody know how
the RIAA scans for violating users? Anyhow, I'm concerned, but not
that concerned.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Tuesday, September
09, 2003 at 15:33:41 (EDT) |
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Am I Evil?
 Mr.
Bones escaped this morning. I went outside for a breather and found
the back door open. I looked around the house but Mr. Bones had skedaddled,
leaving no trace of his presence except an empty food bowl and a trail
of white hair.
Where does he go when he gets outside? Most of the time he just
parks himself in the yard, content to eat grass and display how
his white coat provides no camouflage whatsoever. He looks like
somebody dropped a sandbag off a hot air balloon. Still he manages
to sneak out and disappear completely. Maybe he's been fooling us
all this time; maybe he's got an agenda.
He might be like this horse I once rode when I was a young girl
in an Enid Bagnold novel.
Okay, I was a boy and it was in real life, but who could tell at
that early date? Anyway, they gave me this old horse named Waiter.
When he wasn't kicking me, he'd do this special trick when they
saddled him: He'd puff out his stomach as much as possible, so the
saddle belt would have to come out a couple of notches. Then after
I was in the saddle and riding around, he'd suck in his gut, the
saddle would go slack and I would roll off his back onto the manure-embellished
floor. At this point, stepping on me was optional.
 What
I'm saying is, no matter how cute and adoring animals may seem,
they hate us humans. They hate us so much, it's not funny. So as
for Mr. Bones on his excursion, I have a couple of theories:
1. He's working over another human household so he can collect
two sets of feedings daily and maintain his gut-to-floor ratio,
or
2. He's meeting up with other cats in the neighborhood and they
are planning to kill us in our sleep and take over the house.
All I know is when he came back I found him sitting on the picnic
table, quite a leap for a cat of his, um, gravity. He seemed rather
pleased with himself; in fact, he appeared to be smiling slyly.
I'm keeping my bedroom door shut tonight.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Monday, September
08, 2003 at 21:57:32 (EDT) |
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No one gives a hoot about FAUX-ASS nonsense
I'm well into hour 12 of my never-ending workday. I decided to just
keep on going after 5 today, and I am actually getting stuff done.
But I have no faith it will help me in the long run. I just can't
think of how else to combat the enormous amount of tedium that gets
thrown my way on an hourly basis. Those of you out there who knew
me when I first got this job, remember how smug I was about it? "Yeah,
I just sit around and surf the Internet all day! I routinely come
in hours late and leave early to go to Century
21!"
How times have changed. Now I work from home (good) and do the
work of four people (bad). The people whose jobs I have absorbed:
- The Spanish Guy Who I Thought Was Italian When I Met Him
- The Designer from LA who hated New York and Went Back to LA
- The Guy Based in India Who Used to Publish the Site But I Do
It Now
- My Boss
So obviously, I'm not working super hard at this point, I'm looking
for any distraction possible. I took a half-hour break to go through
my MP3 collection and try to normalize the naming scheme. Plus I
erased a bunch of stuff I know I'll never listen to again (who really
needs a 'disco remix' of INXS' "What You Need"?).
So ultimately, I'm saying "José,
I'm sorry I punked out and didn't make it to the burlesque
show." There'll be other fan dances, someday.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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Monday, September
08, 2003 at 11:03:56 (EDT) |
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But I wouldn't have it any other way
I took it easy Friday night, so I missed The
Psychic Revolution show, which sounded pretty cool.
They played a house party the next night,
which appeared to be a virtual love-in.
As long as there's fast-food grease
to power their tour bus,
I'm sure they'll be back again someday.
Now that everybody thinks the summer is over, we're finally getting
some decent weather around here. September is like the Forgotten
Summer Month. This is what we wanted for the past few months, none
of which could deliver the goods. It's like June, July and August
couldn't remember what pleasant weather was, so they kept overshooting
with rain and heat. We took our bikes to the Park (Prospect,
thank you), stopping off at the farmer's market to get lost in the
throng. Every time I go to the park I always wonder why I don't
spend more time there. We rode down to the lake and hung out in
the sunshine, which resulted in a nice sunburn for me. There were
loons and two big-ass swans. Some guy was explaining to nobody in
particular the way in which he knew a certain tree was a ginkgo
("The berries, they smell like regurgitation").
Saturday night we wandered over to Freddy's
to see Stupid,
who I haven't been able to see in a long time. They always play
the same night we have parties here, it seems. It had been such
a long time since I'd seen them, I was sort of questioning why I
was there. But when the show kicked off, it all came back to me.
Stupid is really one of the best bands I could hope to see on regular
basis around here. The songwriting is solid and the lyrics are smart.
And they kick butt. Also, Dana made latkes for everybody. If that
isn't incentive to go to their shows, I dunno what is.
The evening wound up at the Alibi,
as it is wont to do, where we stayed way too long. Sunday, feeling
guilty about blowing off so much of Friday, I attempted to catch
up on my work backlog. I got some stuff done, but it's all starting
to feel like a bottomless pit. Maybe I'll just keep working today,
never stopping until everything is finally done. It's a nice idea,
just getting everything over with at once. But I'm not sure I have
the stamina.
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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I
can't think of anything else to do today, so here is the essay I wrote
about 